New year, old tricks

Filed Under: Spam

It may be a brand new year, but many cybercriminals will continue to use old tricks - just as long as they carry on working.

Take this attack for instance, which we saw in our spam traps this morning.

Malicious email

An email is spammed out, claiming to come from Microsoft and urging the recipient to download a critical update to patch their systems.

The download and installation links, however, point to an executable program hosted on a website in Italy. Installing the code on your computer is obviously not a good idea.

We will, no doubt, see plenty of new tricks and variations on old themes from cybercriminals during 2009. But that shouldn't make us close our minds to "golden oldie" threats that have been deployed by hackers time and time again over the years.

About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.